About Debra

If you stand in the doorway of Debra's office, you will hear her ask her students, “Can I tell you what you did right?”

Using a playful and empathetic approach, Debra Hori invites students to understand how their brains learn by traveling together through the “neuroscience portal”. She explains to students, their parents, and teachers how learning strategies work which are based upon current research findings. She brings into her private practice a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the connections between body, mind, our nervous systems, and our personal relationships to one another.

Debra's desire has always been to help people find positive ways to cope with challenges that present themselves through difficulties in school or work, relationships, parenting, or the death of a loved one. Her work is centered around helping people learn resilience and finding ways to make difficult situations into transformative experiences.

Debra specializes in teaching reading and writing to elementary school children who are learning disabled, on the autism spectrum, have attention deficit disorders, dyslexia, and who are “twice exceptional” (gifted with learning differences). Her focus is to develop an individualized intervention plan that is tailored for each students' needs so that success and skills are built over time.

She is a certified Martha Beck Life Coach, and a certified Bereavement Facilitator, through the Beyond Loss Bereavement Program at Glendale Adventist Hospital. Her interest in bereavement support focuses on using creative activities to process loss, and, as a result, she pursued additional training with the Creative Grief Studio to develop ways to explore grief through self expression.

Filling her tool box with resources gleaned from personal experiences and interests, Debra infuses her work with techniques learned from mindful awareness practices, Life Coach training, educational therapy, and volunteer grief support group facilitation. She is a writer, a parent of a child with special needs, and she practices yoga and mindful awareness. She enjoys spending restorative time in nature, delights in the ever-present stack of books she is reading, and tries to stay present to see things growing in her garden, which, she believes, is the world's best classroom.